ANIMAL MAGNETISM REVIVED IN LONDON. MaGNrrisst, in various shapes, is

just now occupying a large share of the attention of the scientific world, and excitiag the wonder of the less knowing. The plunnomena of the magnetic needle, of electro- magnetism, mineral magnetism, and animal magnetism, are so extraor- dinary and inexplicable, and withal tend so strongly to demonstrate the ' .ersality of this subtle and imponderable agent, that the study of them is equally interesting and abstruse. Dr. FARADAY'S important discoveries in electro-magnetism need only to be alluded to. Last year we made mention of a German phy.. sician, Dr. SCHMIDT, who came to this country for the purpose of pro. mitigating a new theory of mineral magnetism, and of introducing the magnet as a remedial agent in cases of affections of the nervous sys- tem; and now we have a French physician, Baron DUPOTET DE SENNEVOYE, making experiments in the almost exploded practice of animal magnetism. The English medical men are as sceptical of the merits of all new systems and questionable remedies, as the ignorant multitude is credulous ; and Dr. SCHMIDT, we believe, made but very few converts to his opinion of the medical virtues of thc magnet, what- ever his progress may have been in the scientific branch of his theory. He continues to practice, however ; and we lately heard he was expe- rimenting on the Marquis of ANGLESEY, who has tried all other reme- dies for tic doloureux in vain.

The effects produced by Baron Dceorrr's application of animal magnetism to one or two patients in the North London Hospital, at- tached to University College, admit of no dispute. The medical men present seem to have been staggered by ocular proofs of the reality of tile influence exercised by the operator's manipulations on the patients ; an influence which, in the astounding cases reported in Germany and France, was ascribed to an excited imagination, if not to a precon. certed plan of imposture, but which in these cases evidently was of a physical nature. The following minute and graphic account of the experiments of Baron DIIPOTET is taken from the communication of an intelligent eye-witness to the Lancet of this week. The writer, though not of the medical profession, understands enough of medicine to appreciate as well as accurately to describe the phcenomena. He was, moreover, pre- viously sceptical; being, as he says of himself, "a professed unbe- liever in whatever is not proved."

Baron Derogsr is described as

"A plain, intelligent, unassuming-looking roan, with a resemblance, it struck me, to Mr. Vigors, the Member for Carlow."

This was his mode of operating upon the first patient-

" She was apparently about twenty years of age ; with dark hair, heavy look, u if suffering under the effect of some soporific drug, an in- patient of the hospital on account ofepileptic fits, and I suspect had partially lost the use of the left ado

horn calms connected with that complaint. The Baron proceeded to draw his hands downwards before her face, (sometimes alternately and sometimes both together. in the manner which I believe is pretty generally known AS making part of the 'magnetic' process, for about a quarter of an hour."

This experiment was declared unsuccessful ; the patient only felt a

little sleepy. It WAR the neat that produced these extraordinary results. The subject of the operation was a girl of

"About seventeen years of age, with fair complexion ends profueion of flaxen ringlets, Grecian features, and in fact eminently handsome, figure short and slightly inclining to Lord Byron's dislike; ankles rather stouter than the

Venus's, hands large and red, that looked like vouchers for honest labour ; to all appearance in the bloom of youth and health, and manifestly of the tern perarnent the French would call sensible et coquette, but an ounpatient of the hospital for epileptic fits, and with (as afterwards appeared) a seton in the back of her neck, in part process of cure. From the downcast direction of her eyes as she sat, they could not be calculated on for indicating sleep ; but her fingers played with her shawl, in the manner of a person who does not quite know what to do with her hands, which showed her to be awake. The Baron proceeded with the waving motion of his hands. I cannot say positively whether he ever touched her face, but he might possibly sometimes touch it slightly, or the sur- rounding curls; and he certainly touched the gigot sleeves, in a way which she could not fail to be conscious on Once also—honi snit gni ;nal y pense—in a later stage of the performance, lie touched her knee, through the clothes, with the point of the fingers of the flattened hand held horizontally, as if lie was in- tending to keep up an electric communication. The patient appeared dis- posed to doze, and lean back in her chair ; in doing which, she several times complained of hurting the seton in her neck, which temporarily roused her. In about five minutes she began to rub the left eye with the back of her hand, and then the other, rubbing with both hands at once with considerable violence. At the intimation of the Baron, somebody told her to open her eyes, and she replied pettishly, • I can't, I can't.' Some of the medical attendants opened the

. eyelids by force, and they closed again. The Baron then intimated that he would restore her to vision ; and this part of the proceedings I watched or ith mash curiosity. It appeared to me, that he applied the thumbs and forefingers of both hands at once to the interior angles of the eyes, and then drew them from the nose outwards, pressing against the edges of the bones of the orbits ; and this be did rapidly, twice. The patient immediately rose from her chair and opened her eyes, looking about her with a winking and embarrassed man- ner, as if waked out of sleep. I describe what I saw; and the only comment I sin make upon it is, that up to this period there could not be said to be any dis- tinct evidence, beyond the assertion of the patient, for the reality of the effects purported to be produced. " She sat down without the smallest appearance of reluctance, for the con-

tinuation of the experiment. Her fingers at first played with her ehawl as be- fore ; hut in three or four minutes the motion of the fingers ceased, and first Oae hand and then the other fell down as in sleep. She soon began to lean to her left against the Baron, who, I must gay, supported her in a very handsome and artist like manner, by taking hold of her elbow with one hand, continuing to wave the other before her face. In about a minute more she raised herself, with a kind of convulsive effort to inspire the greatest possible quantity of air— which the Baron received with a id, lei, as a man who knew perfectly what was coming ; and then the made a prolonged expiration, with something between a sigh and a sob, and fell across the arm of the chair On the other side as if d ad. To preserve the bienseances, she was laid out upon the floor, and her head and shoulders were propped on a machine provided in hospitals for that purpose. The muscles appeared entirely relaxed, the limbs remaining in any position into which they were put ; and in fact, with the exception that her colour continued slightly flushed, the presented the appearance of a recent cot pse. The doctors proceeded to pinch her hands, each harder than his pre- tieeessor, and forced snuff up her nostrils at an unmerciful rate, as each sur- mised his rappee was stronger than his neighbour's ; but all without producing

any token of sensibility. A young artist present could not help exclaiming, What would I give if she would remain in that position for twelve bouts, that I might sketch her !—[a sufficiently long time to make a sketch]—and truly a painter with a Cymote might have racked his imagination a long time for so good an Iphigenia. The next process was that of shaking and shouting her name in her ear. This at first produced movements of impatience, such as I think I have witnessed in the cases of epilepsy which fall more or less under everybody's notice; and once she made that motion which is so frightful to the ft lends of epileptic patients, and resembles an effort to shake off an invisible enetny—the "si pet tore possit Exeussisse

of the Roman poet. At last our youthful Pythoness began to speak : " Tune sic °Ise loqui The first words she uttered were, 0 why should blushes dye my cheek ? ' anti the next were a poetical apliot ism of no doubt equal impressiveness, of which I only collected that the burden was a sigh.'

----" Et tails fate,

Conticult But after being again • well shaken,' she spoke again and said, I won't be turned out, as I was before, for the servants to laugh at ;' which was explained

by soniebody saying, that on a former occasion, when she had been subjected to the same experiments, she fancied that the servants (I suppose of the hospital) laughed at her. On continuation of the shaking process, she began to relate by stars some (recurrences in her neighbourhood which had impressed her imagination, in the low, quiet tone of people that talk in their sleep, intermixed with laughing. Some of the women present remarked, ' That's exactly all what she talks in her tits.' The Baron now began to try what he probably considered as his tours de force; but these appeared to me to be failures. Ile retired to the extremity of the ward, and I understood the effect was to be that the patierit was to conic to herself ; but nothing of this kind was produced. He then signified that he would take another individual by the band, and while he held his hand, the patient was to make to that individual rational answers. It Was tried, anti sure enough the patient replied; but not to the point, and always upon one subject. The individual whose hand was taken by the Baron, was a pupil, who, it appeared, had charge of the department of young ladies with setone in their necks ; and his voice invariably caused her ideas to recur to the dressing of her neck, and she replied to him, half coquettishly and half pettishly, Get away. Do you know how much you hurt my neck ? If you hurt me so, you shall never come near me again. I thought the young man seemed rather disconcerted by the duty he was put upon. After something mole than an hour had elapsed from the time when the patient 'sighed away her soul,' the Baron intimated that he would restore her to conscisusnees. What he did this time appeared to consist in bringing his two bands within a foot of her face, and waving them two or three times across the face, from the nose outwards, in directions at right angles to that by which the first symptoms had appeared to be induced, saying at the same time, with as much of English pro- nunciation as he could muster, • Get up.' The patient immediately rose, and looked about her with the same winking and embarrassed air as before, took the arm of the young pupil, as Terence would say, qudmfutniliariter, and dis- appeared in the matron's room; after which I saw her no more till, chancing to be detained by rain at the vestibule, I saw her going out, apparently nothing

the worse; and as I was asked if I would see the experiment renewed the neat day but one, I suppose she was perfectly needy for the repetitiou."

The writer offers the following very rational solution of the appme rent mystery as far as regards the modus operandi.

" And now I come to the impression made on me in the way of explanations, I entirely give up the idea of collusion on the part of the patient • she wee' much too pretty and light-hearted to be the instrument of a cold. blooded sag. painful fraud. To saypo more of the pinching anti the snuff, it would have: required a long drilling to teach a girl the symptoms to be counterfeited ; tied; what would he the-chance of a foreigner's finding the requisites united, in an

out-patient in the University College Hospital? •

" The explanation, I apprehend lies in a much shorter compass. It is simply, that the waving motion of ;he hands (which it is observable is as per' ceptithe to the patient when the eyes are shut as when open, especially if the: face he turned towards the light, as anybody may convince themselves luy rapes rintent with their own hands) produces an action on the brain, (akin perhaps to the dizziness produced by the sight of running water,) sufficient in some epileptic patients (in the actual case, one out of too,) to bring on a real repeti- tion of the epilectic fit. I never felt any doubt that the patient was in one of tier epileptic fits ; and the remark of the women is confirmation of the identity. What troubled me, was the idea of what would become of us all if rfli patient never recovered, and we were brought before the Coroner that sat on Mr. Cocking. How the recovery was brought about, I admit to be the mysterious point; but if we will only keep our wits about us, and not be ruin away with by admiration of the marvellous, we must be on the point of finding out the whole. The fact already ascer- tained, I maintain to be, that certain motions before the eyes produce a cerebral affection, capable of inducing epilepsy in certain states of predispo,itian. There is nothing in this mote wonderful than in many other facts established by ex; periment. For example, a few weeks ago I experienced for the first time, wilt I remember hearing the servants talk of when I was a boy, that certain mourns upon walls and furniture produce giddiness. I was in a room at the Albion, and found the walls turning round. My first thoughts were of apoplexy . but the recollection of the ecreoints' assertion came to my relief. The paper on the walls was a crimson ground, with something like serpentine columns in white, reaching from the floor to the ceiling. Now if so slight a circumstance can produce a cerebral affection in a person of strong nerves and free from disease, there seems nothing unreasonable in believing that a wavy motion before the eyes of a weakly patient, may produce a sui genesis effect upon the brain, which in epileptic habits shall have a tendency to produce recurrence of the fit. It appears to be tnerely a question of experiment. An honest scepticism does not consist in refusing to believe that a cause A may produce an effect B, if ex- periment proves them to be connected ; but in refusing to believe any thing without competent proof.

" Now I submit that, in the case described, there is just so much of this kind of evidence as goes to establish the cause assigned. It is out of the range of probability, that a foreigner should have been able to instil with effect into the mind of a hospital patient, that precisely such and such a departure from her ordinary restraint in language and conversation, would best keep up the charac- ter she was to assume. I therefore conclude it to be more likely that there aqu- a real affection of the brain. " One inference would appear to be, that the cerebral irritation which induces the epileptic action, at least of the artificial kind, is attended with no pain. It may even be attended with soothing and agreeable sensations ; as in the ease of a little

girl of my own, of four-and-a- half years, who always requests to be ' tickled 'to• sleep ; the 'tickling' consisting in somebody drawing their hands lightly over her

face, which invariably sends her in a few minutes to sleep. Various questions of

importance may also suggest themselves. If there is a process that removes the artificial fit, will it lead to a way of removing. the natural one? And what is to be the effect of the artificial fits upon thepattent ? Epilepsy is understood to be confirmed by habit ; is then the repetition three times a week of the artificial fit, to go towards confirming the habit, or may it have a tendency to act as A vaccine, and prevent or modify the natural disease ? It has been asserted in

some of the newspapers, that the patient described has had no recurrence of her natural fits since the artificial practice. If this be so, there appears something like an exhaustion of the epileptic tendency."

We incline to think that the patient was simply brought into that state of general inertness of brain, with partial activity of some organs

(to speak pbrenologically) in a morbid state of excitement, which causes somnambulism. What curative influence, if any, the operation may have on disease, remains to be seen ; but that the manipulations only produce the phenomena in cases of diseased condition, or weak or over excited brain, and in proportion to the morbid sensibility of the patient, seems evident. That a strong and healthy person in a quiescent state of brain is not affected by the operation, would appear from the fact that a pupil of the Hospital submitted to be operated upon, and no results followed ; while the first patient, though diseased, but

who was of a less delicate organization, Was only made "a little sleepy:"

There seems little doubt but that the influence is of a magnetic kind ; the waving motion of the hands producing a current of elec-

tricity. Indeed, animal magnetism itself originated in a notion enter-

tained by Al MIER, the inventor, that the extraordinary effects produced by mineral magnetism were asctibable to some subtile human influence communicated by the operator to the patient, through the electric cur- rent created by passing the magnet frequently over the part affected; the magnet, however, is equally efficacious when applied fixedly to the scat of disease. The effect of the magnetic influence on the nervous system is said to be soothing and lulling when the steel magnet is ap- plied : humun magnetism would seem to be still more somniferous. We are glad to see the practice of animal magnetism divested of its quackeries and delusions, and put to the test of physical experiment. If it do no more than throw a light on the action of the brain and its influence on the entire nervous system, some benefit will result to science.